“Shadow Dancing” is Andy Gibb’s best song

Wrong. Gibb had plenty of great songs. In fact, outside of (Don't Throw it All Away) Our Love, which was his only actual ballad single release, all his singles were fantastic.

His hairy chest was his only redeeming asset.

are you sure about that?

R3 those left nothing to the imagination

He needs to be nude.

Well, he’s dead.

He was excellent in all possible ways. Sad.

It always makes me think of when Mr Garrison got a nose job in South Park.

I actually think he got hotter and sexier as he got older... hair cut short and wavy/curly, wore those open shirts to show off his great hairy chest...

"Sorry not sorry"

You might be retarded, OP (and you reply to yourself a lot - sad)

R11 what post here is me replying to myself?

He was more talented than the average teen idol, which admittedly isn't saying much.

I'd put him roughly on a par with Ricky Nelson: good looks, good voice, and a decent amount of charisma. Maybe could have gone farther if circumstances were a little different.

My all-time favorite by Andy Gibb is "Time is Time".

Time is Time is my favourite.

Many people don't know he had a daughter.

Such a shame. He was sexy and talented.

What jockey shorts did Momma Bee Gee buy that all her boys had such high falsettos? And why didn’t his brothers invite him to be the fourth Bee Gee? It’s like he was the original Bonus Jonas or last Osmond boy. And who was mores responsible for the Aussie Wave, Helen Reddy or ONJ?

[quote]And why didn’t his brothers invite him to be the fourth Bee Gee?

I was going to ask this too. Did he just want a solo career, maybe?

He was much much younger than his brothers, having been born in 1958. When the BeeGees first started out, Andy was only a toddler, and they scored their first hits before he was 10 years old. By the time Andy turned 18, they were already very well established and were just about to go into SNF. And I'm sure Andy wanted to make a name for himself (though he sure took advantage of Barry's songwriting, producing and backing vocals skills).

Also, the Bee Gees harmonized beautifully together, and that's a tough thing to bring a fourth voice into. I think Crosby, Stills and Nash were never as good with Neil Young as they were without him.

Andy was a good pop star. It’s a shame he left us so soon thanks to Victoria Principle.

He was blessed with looks and a beautiful hairy chest. He had talent but too strung out to properly utilize it. Didn't Barry basically sing most of his albums as a backup?

He had a hairy ass but he couldn't live forever.

[quote]Did he ever sing live???

Yes. Saw him at SPAC in '78 or '79.

"Why" was one of my favorites.

[quote] And his dancing was him shaking his tush.

You're [italic]complaining???[/italic]

I was listening to his 3rd and final album on vinyl the other day, “After Dark”. It’s really good but I’ve read that by 1980 he was so coked out that brother Barry had to take over and produce it and basically support Andy’s vocals with his own. There is a lovely duet with Olivia Newton John on this record.

Andy and Nell Carter singing Up Where We Belong on Gimme A Break. There wasn't a gram of coke left anywhere in Hollywood after filming was completed.

Victoria Principal killed him!

Andy and Victoria Principal recorded the old standard All I Have To Do Is Dream (which I have), and it was his last charting single.

I always liked "An Everlasting Love".

He got a man perm in the early 80s, but I thought he looked good with short hair that was his natural color. Here he is right after he opened on Broadway in Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat, and which he would be fired from about a month later for missing too many performances.

R25 is correct. The big hit from the after dark album “desire” was a rejected track from The Bee Gees spirits having flown album. Barry recorded the duets with Olivia Newton John because Andy skipped the recording session and his voice was added in later.

The cocaine killed him at age 30. Horrible.

He was looking much older by the time he died

Mick LaSalle article about seeing Andy in concert in 1986.

He did a good job with Words. I agree that Shadow Dancing is his best song. You never hear it on oldies stations even though it was the number one song of 1978. He was only 19 when he recorded it.

One of the last photos of Gibb taken in January 1988 right before he left for England to work on a comeback album. He was 29 here but looked older.

He was the best of all the hosts on Solid Gold. The lyrics of Shawdow Dancing are a little mysterious. You can interpret them several ways. I listen to the song at least once a week.

I Just Want to be Your Everything

You're all wrong! 'Love Is (Thicker Than Water)' was Andy's best song.

Poor guy. If it weren't for his addiction problems, I think he would have went on to have a string of hits in the 80s into the early 90s.

R38 I love that song, but not his best.

Sometimes love is thinner than a line of coke.

Was he a homophobe?

I remember hearing I just Want To Be Your Everything for years afterwards, but not his other hits.

R39, I think it is.

I Just Want to Be Your Everything still ranks high up as one of billboards biggest singles of all time because it stayed in the top 10 top 100 for so long.

That ball-busting bitch Victoria Principal ruined Andy Gibb. Absolutely RUINED him! Chewed him up and spat him out when she coukd no longer get any publicity out of him.

Didn’t he have a solid run on Solid Gold for awhile, perhaps cohosting with DL legend herself Dionne Warwick, or was that some Fever dream I had?

He cohosted with Marilyn McCoo for the 81-82 season but was fired for missing too many shows. He did duet with Dionne on solid gold in 1980.

Not their finest hour musically, but they are both well coiffed.

Joan Rivers grilling him on the tonight show in December 1983.

I thought it was his ONLY song, before his premature demise. He certainly was the cutest of the group.

No love for "I Can't Help It" with Olivia Newton-John?

Have this fantasy visual of him laying out by a setting sun pool wearing the tiniest bikini of a campy pretty color (light purple or pink) laying out on a pool chair and boned up big time...

i think he looked better with short hair and older... that fabulous hairy chest shown off in interview after interview was so hot, you see NOTHING like this nowadays!...

Because hairless is seen as beautiful in modern day r52

[quote] No love for "I Can't Help It" with Olivia Newton-John?

I love it!

[quote]No love for "I Can't Help It" with Olivia Newton-John?

It's on my iPod, seriously.

[quote]There is a lovely duet with Olivia Newton John on this record.

That ended his career. Her duet with Cliff Richard also killed him off in America.

[quote]He cohosted with Marilyn McCoo for the 81-82 season but was fired for missing too many shows.

And he was replaced by Rex Smith and no one noticed.

[quote]And who was mores responsible for the Aussie Wave, Helen Reddy or ONJ?

Considering Olivia Newton-John is British, I'd say Helen.

R56 his career tanked because of him.

[quote]And why didn’t his brothers invite him to be the fourth Bee Gee?

Because there were originally FOUR BeeGees and they didn't like four. They fired all the "fourth" guys

[quote]The cocaine killed him at age 30. Horrible.

Wrong, he killed himself

[quote]I always liked "An Everlasting Love"

You can barely hear him over the other Bee Gee's backing him.

[quote]Did he ever sing live???

He sang with ONJ at the Concert For Unicef, and performed the song "Rest Your Love On Me.""

The Bee Gees always gave ONJ their shitty songs.

r59

Oddly enough it took off in England after that and he became bigger than ever. ONJ failed after a greatest hits album.

Andy Gibb and Pat Arnold are one of the most bizarre duet couplings I've ever encountered.

[Quote] Because there were originally FOUR BeeGees and they didn't like four. They fired all the "fourth" guys

Weren't there five when they were a band?

There is so much disinformation on this thread. The one thing someone got right is that Victoria Principal killed him!

[quote] That ended his career. Her duet with Cliff Richard also killed him off in America.

Nope. Andy had another hit after I Can't Help It called Time is Time, and after Suddenly, Cliff had one of his biggest American hits, Dreamin, and a follow-up, A Little in Love, which was less successful, but still a Top 40 hit.

[quote] The Bee Gees always gave ONJ their shitty songs.

What the fuck are you talking about? Olivia's main songwriter was John Farrar, and if she ever recording any Gibb Brothers songs, they weren't released as singles.

R62 that was on his greatest hits album. Pat had worked with Barry Gibb for years and may have been signed to RSO records at the time this was recorded.

Andy re-recorded “will you still love me tomorrow”with Victoria Principal but after the flop of their “all I have to do is dream” duet it was mercifully shelved.

r65, "Come On Over" was written by Barry and Robin Gibb and featured on their Main Course album; ONJ covered it on her album also titled Come On Over: released as a single, it hit #1 on the AC chart, #5 on the Country chart, and #33 on the Hot 100.

Victoria didn’t kill Andy, he killed himself. He had a bad drug habit before meeting principal and it led to the breakup of his marriage.

His brothers and mother always said he was a boy in a mans body and never grew up, though his mother coddled/babied him for much of his life. He was slightly estranged from Barry and Maurice he had slid back into drinking heavily and they were fed up with it. He actually ran into a wall at robins estate and knocked his front teeth out.

Speaking of teeth here is Andy at 17 before getting his teeth capped.

Ohh, ALL those Gibb songs they dumped on her.

Barry and Olivia duetting on Guilty.

Weird how some people can handle cocaine, alcohol, etc., into their 60s. Some, like Andy, barely make it to 30.

As stated above, he was a lot younger than the 3 older brothers. Lookswise, very similar to Barry, the sole survivor of the brothers. I think Barry still has a sister or two, though.

This is going to be very MARY, but I remember exactly when I heard Andy Gibb died. I had recently moved to NYC and I was working at Tower Records. I got to my station early with a cup of coffee and the New York Post and was hanging out before we opened, waiting for my cash drawer, and there it was, on the front page. I made them play Andy all morning.

[quote]Wrong, he killed himself

Well, yes and no. He died from myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscle and is caused by opiate drug abuse. It's not uncommon with cocaine and heroin addicts.

[quote]I think Barry still has a sister or two, though.

Lesley Gibb is the eldest Gibb sibling and the only girl. She's still alive.

If you haven't seen the recent HBO documentary on the Bee Gees, I recommend it. It's very good.

Sure, Andy.

They should have cloned his hair before he died. I want some.

So did Maurice, he was sad Andy didn’t leave it too him in his will.

Everything from the 70s was cheesy and sappy.

The 70s was a great time

The 1920s was a great time for Golden Girls worshipping, DL geezers.

Victoria Principal was not responsible for Andy's demise. She did care for him and tried to help him with his drug problem but ultimately grew tired of his addiction and told him that he must choose between her and the drugs which had become a huge problem in his life and career. Although the Gibb family did barre her from coming to Andy's funeral.

[quote] Although the Gibb family did barre her from coming to Andy's funeral.

Why? Did she not wear toe shoes to the viewing?

R83 Barry Gibb banned Victoria from attending Andy's funeral because he believed that their breakup make him spiral into a deeper addiction. This belief is very debatable.

I would ban Victoria Principal for less.

One of the demos that he recorded in 1987.

[Quote] Barry Gibb banned Victoria from attending Andy's funeral because he believed that their breakup make him spiral into a deeper addiction. This belief is very debatable.

That's odd. He did feel the same about Lulu.

It would be a bit rich for Maurice to finger wag at Andy about his drinking. Anyway, all the Gibbs were infamous for indulging, to the point that their roadies gave them the nicknames of Pilly, Potty and Pissy.

[Quote] That's odd. He did feel the same about Lulu.

He DIDN'T feel the same about Lulu.

Andy and The Bee Gees.

Pilly, potty and pissy?

Yes. Each favored something different: pills, pot (marijuana), booze.

Sounds like you know more than you are saying, R92. SPILL it!

[quote]As Maurice once said: “We weren’t on the charts. We were the charts.” Is it true that they once wrote three US No 1 singles in a matter of hours? “I think we were pretty high,” Gibb says. Amphetamines were their poison back then. “We wrote Too Much Heaven, Tragedy and Shadow Dancing [sung by Andy Gibb] in one afternoon, but we were flying. Ha ha.”

I think they wrote the Saturday Night Fever songs really quickly too.

They wrote shadow dancing with Andy while filming Sgt pepper’s lonely hearts club band. About the only good thing that came from filming that piece of shit.

Joe Walsh played guitar on “i just want to be your everything” and “love is thicker than water”

Andy was supposed to be the co lead on grease 2 but he was such a mess at that point and failed his screen test and not long after The Bee Gees sued Robert Stigwood and Andy was dropped from the label.

Bob Hope had Andy blackballed from NBC for several years because he failed to show up to a special he was filming because he was so out of it.

Bob Hope was an asshole.

“ We wrote Too Much Heaven, Tragedy and Shadow Dancing [sung by Andy Gibb] in one afternoon, but we were flying. Ha ha.”

Drugs or no drugs, that is amazing. I adore “Too much Heaven”.

Did one of them have a thing with Samantha Sang?

Samantha Sang was a double-bagger.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

She has actually aged quite well.

After reading this all I really want a biopic on Andy Gibb. Could the Hemsworth brothers pull off The Bee Gees? What hit young Australian could be Andy? And who will play evil incarnate Victoria Principal?

This body language is very "We're fucking but trying not to look intimate."

[Quote] Andy re-recorded “will you still love me tomorrow”with Victoria Principal but after the flop of their “all I have to do is dream” duet it was mercifully shelved.

Ah, so Pat Arnold was probably drafted in at the last minute. I guess Yvonne Elliman has flown the coop.

He reminds me of Shawn Mendes. I bet he would still be alive if he had stayed single and childless, just like Heath. Sad.

What a weird comment to make. Andy Gibb mostly abandoned his child. He lived his life like a teenager.

What do you know

R106 Or a candle in the wind.

R106 Getting pregnant for money leads to single motherhood. She should have known better than to reproduce with a guy who wants to live a life like a teenager. I would have aborted a child by a druggie because I don't want to bring faulty addict genes into the world. #prochoice

Well, the daughter is still alive, is she not? Anyway, you're getting off track. Someone was blaming Andy's trajectory on becoming a father. He was never a father, just a sperm donor.

Do some of y'all think he was in the closet?

No. He was too messy for that not to become a story.

Dear God. Not every sad story is linked to someone being a closet case. There are a shit ton of issues anyone can be going through. Not everything is about liking dick. Jesus.

How old was he when he fathered a child? I had no idea about this and I was a big fan.

Wait he’s 20 in that “Shadow Dancing” video?

He looks late 30’s!

He’s 19 going on 20 r115

He always looked older.

[quote] After reading this all I really want a biopic on Andy Gibb. Could the Hemsworth brothers pull off The Bee Gees? What hit young Australian could be Andy? And who will play evil incarnate Victoria Principal?

I don't think there's enough reason for a biopic at any level above the Lifetime or VH-1 kind of biopic for Andy. No one remembers him (enough to justify this), his music is good, but you can't categorize him as a "genius artist ripe for rediscovering" since his brothers pretty much did all the heavy lifting on his songs, and his downfall is very "garden-variety" dug related, and there's no triumph anywhere.

Also, there is a Bee Gees biopic in the works. Adding Andy as a character in that will likely suffice.

"Adding Andy as a character in that will likely suffice."

And, in keeping with the Academy rules regarding on-screen diversity. the part of Andy Gibb will be played by a Black woman.

He was 19 when his daughter was born.

He married his wife in 1976 when he was 18, both of their families asked them to wait but Andy wanted to get married because he was about to start work on his first album and would be leaving Australia.

Kim (his ex wife) found out she was pregnant when they were separating and she went home to Australia to be with her family while she was pregnant. Shortly afterwards she was served with divorce papers. He saw his daughter once in 1980 when she was two and that was because Kim was traveling and stopped over in LA and arranged it.

He spoke to her on the phone but never saw her again in person. His daughter said she has nice memories of those calls but didn’t see him as a dad but more like a friend.

[quote]And, in keeping with the Academy rules regarding on-screen diversity. the part of Andy Gibb will be played by a Black woman.

And the biopic will be about how the Bee Gees "ripped off" black music and were horrible cultural appropriators.

Andy's daughter Peta. She's now in her mid-forties, lives in Australia and has two kids

R119 So it was the typical break-up pregnancy?

[quote]And who was mores responsible for the Aussie Wave, Helen Reddy or ONJ?

R17 Helen Reddy was the one who encouraged ONJ to move to America, so she was the precursor. Olivia was definitely the biggest star, though.

[quote]And why didn’t his brothers invite him to be the fourth Bee Gee?

They did. In fact, they had announced his joining:

[quote]Over the next few years Andy would go twice to drug rehabilitation and in 1988 planned a come back and a record deal with Island Records. But the deal was never signed, and despite the Bee Gees also announcing Andy Gibb would be officially joining their group as the fourth Bee Gee in 1988, Andy was suffering. Just two days after celebrating his 30th birthday in London and while working on his new album, Andy was admitted to hospital in Oxford where he complained of chest pains and died not long afterwards.

R124 he was going to be the 4th in 1988. I think the person was asking why not from the start of his career, but it always made sense to me to make him a solo star because he was so young compared to them and handsome. He was easily marketable. And it worked.

Him singing “Words” live. He looked so handsome here too.

He looks so much like Barry in the clip at R126. Love that song.

R127 and he sang it beautifully! Surprised by how great he sounded and his vocal abilities. Beautiful vibrato.

Success must have hit Andy hard. Imagine having 3 number one songs in a row (I Just Want To Be Your Everything, Thicker Than Water, and Shadow Dancing) at that age.

(Love Is) Thicker Than Water has to have the title of Stupidest Song Title, but musically, it's my favorite. I love that lush, unrushed fadeout at the end.

R129 many have had just as much success, if not more, at that age or younger and didn’t act out how he did.

Was he molested?

He may have had Imposter Syndrome.

Honestly, the Imposter Syndrome would be valid, as his success was mostly due to his brothers and him being a Gibb. Of course that doesn’t mean he would be a success, many siblings to celebs try and don’t make it big, but he had the doors opened to him since he was a small child. He didn’t have to bust his ass like his brothers. He was much younger and once he was a teen and wanted to sing, everything was ready for him.

Thankfully he came out looking like Barry so they could try to make him a solo star and not add him to the group right away.

Barry was the one who wanted to make Andy the 4th Bee Gee. Robin and Maurice were against it and at one point a vote was taken and Barry was outvoted 2-1. I don’t know if it would’ve worked with the age difference between the Andy and the brothers (12 with Barry, 9 with robin and Maurice). The brothers had developed a very tough skin from early on from growing up in poverty, years of rejection before making it big and career downturns and the backlash. Andy didn’t have to go through those hard times the way his brothers did. He was also notorious for canceling concerts at the last minute, and not showing up.

Leslie’s oldest daughter Bernice (Beri) was raised by her/bee gees/Andy’s parents Hugh and Barbara and tired to make a go of a show biz career but never took off. She died last year at 56.

The Bee Gees threw Andy a birthday party in 1987 on his 29th birthday. Apparently this band was pretty popular in the south and rupaul was a part of it though he’s not shown.

He’s only 29 here but looks pretty older though still handsome

The band was big all over the world…. R135

Did Andy only snort or did he inject?

Was there a big coke problem in Australia back in the day, or was he only exposed to that when he came to the US?

Has Ricky Springfield ever commented?

LA has always been a coke capital

This thread has really brought back my absolute teen lust for Andy Gibb. He died at a hard 30, but in his prime he was sex on a stick. Even his hairy shoulders got me hard! Don't Throw It All Away is my number one AG song.

He and Paul Stanley were my first masturbation go-tos as an 11 year old fascinated with hairy chests.

R142 Paul Stanley was in my spank bank too. I had never seen such a specimen in real life. I must have cum a million times to both Paul and Andy!

the photography in the teen magazines had a really glossy, low-rent quality to it, so it really looked somewhat pornographic. and when you put that with a hairy chest, oh man, it was so sleazy.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm...

R142, R143, R144,.. add in some old school pornographic tom jones with his open shirt, hairy sweaty chest and those chippendale moves and i concur with him, gibb and stanley...great jack off go-to's as a gayling... add in some clint walker, lee majors, gil gerard too while we're at it!..

His ex wife has said he got hooked on it when they moved to LA to promote his first album. He would disappear for long periods of time and started to her paranoid. She said she started finding small buckets with bleach in them. She found it that it was a crude way of seeing if cocaine was pure. If it sunk to the bottom of the bucket it was pure, if it floated to the top it had something mixed in with it.

His ex wife received a one time payout of $250k after they divorced in 1978. Considering how family oriented The Bee Gees were there never seemed to be any fallout or concern that andy never saw his kid and didn’t have much of a relationship with her. The Gibb brothers did sign over all of their rights to the songs they wrote for Andy to his daughter not long after his death.

This guy could play Andy Gubb in a biopic

Andy and Victoria on the Donahue show.

I don’t know if you could do a biopic of Andy but he would make an interesting character in a Tarantino movie similar to Sharon tate in once upon a time in Hollywood.

Did Andy cross paths with Dorothy Stratten?

“ The Gibb brothers did sign over all of their rights to the songs they wrote for Andy to his daughter not long after his death.”

Classy.

R151 agreed. Very classy of them